I'm a huge baseball fan and bought this game to pass whatever free time I had in Afghanistan. This isn't a gaming experience that will keep you up into the wee-hours of the morning or make you worship the ground that 2K walks on, but for a computer sports game (which have been terribly bad for forever), its a decent play that should keep you interested for a bit. Make sure you have a decent gamepad for your computer, even a $20 gamepad is 100x easier than using the keyboard and mouse.
The menu's into the game can be confusing, especially with a new gamepad. Adjusting to the controls will take a few moments, but like any other controls you get used to them fairly quickly. The rosters are accurate as are the majority of player representations. One of the highlights of the game is the Signature Style and there are more than a few players who you can immediately identify (poster boy Timmy Lincecum for example), others are using one of 30 generic batting stances or pitching mechanics.
The basic gameplay is easy to understand but almost impossible to master and small glitches haunt this game, but don't make it totally unplayable. Pitching is simple, and the majority of fielding is the same way. The couple of obvious glitches include the 1st baseman coming off the bag for a routine groundball out. The other is that sometimes, just sometimes the outfielder will completely let the ball drop over his head or next to him without so much as moving (being the optimistic, I like to think of this as the ball getting caught in the lights or the sun). Another thing that frusterates me more than anything is either the ball stays in the air for too long or the outfielders have incredible gap coverage and more than once in a game a decent hit ball will be caught by an outfielder who managed to move 200 feet in 3 seconds.
Offense in the game is feast or famine. I've found that when you're off rhythym, you're off rhythym bad and will strike out 3-4 times in a row, but once you connect with the ball, don't be surprised to score 4-5-6 runs in an inning.
The visuals in this game are fantastic, from the ballparks to the players that are in them, this game is stunning and lets you see that the barrier between fake players and the real world are often becoming less distinct. The Franchise mode isn't the deepest, but lets you take over the basics of any franchise and with each organization having 4 teams (Single-A, Double-A, Triple-A, and MLB) you can adjust lineups and callup/send-down players to your hearts delight. Its always a thing of beauty to draft a 20 year old infielder, then in 3 years have him win some league-award all thanks to your crafty ability to move him up and down in the ranks as his skills and stats increase or decrease.
Its not a bad experience by any means, but someone who is looking for an incredibly polished game might look elsewhere or to a console version of this game. Its a typical PC sports game and should be treated as such.
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